“Mr. Morton,” said an elderly man from St. George, “had you not better
let the warders of the gaol go first; he is a desperate man, and they
will best understand his ways?”
In answer to this Morton said nothing, but he would let no one put a
foot before him. He still pressed forward among the rocks, and at last
came to a spot from whence he might have sprung at one leap into the
ocean. It was a broken cranny on the sea-shore into which the sea beat,
and surrounded on every side but the one by huge broken fragments of
stone, which at first sight seemed as though they would have admitted of
a path down among them to the water’s edge; but which, when scanned more
closely, were seen to be so large in size, that no man could climb from
one to another. It was a singularly romantic spot, but now well known to
them all there, for they had visited it over and over again that
morning.
“In there,” said Danny Lund, keeping well behind Morton’s body, and
pointing at the same time to a cavern high up among the rocks, but quite
on the opposite side of the little inlet of the sea. The mouth of the
cavern was not twenty yards from where they stood, but at the first
sight it seemed as though it must be impossible to reach it. The
precipice on the brink of which they all now stood, ran down sheer into
the sea, and the fall from the mouth of the cavern on the other side was
as steep. But Danny solved the mystery by pointing upwards, and showing
them how he had been used to climb to a projecting rock over their
heads, and from thence creep round by certain vantages of the stone till
he was able to let himself down into the aperture. But now, at the
present moment, he was unwilling to make essay of his prowess as a
cragsman. He had, he said, been up on that projecting rock thrice, and
there had seen the eyes moving in the cavern. He was quite sure of that
fact of the pair of eyes, and declined to ascend the rock again.
Traces soon became visible to them by which they knew that some one had
passed in and out of the cavern recently. The stone, when examined, bore
those marks of friction which passage and repassage over it will always
give. At the spot from whence the climber left the platform and
commenced his ascent, the side of the stone had been rubbed by the close
friction of a man’s body. A light boy like Danny Lund might find his way
in and out without leaving such marks behind him, but no heavy man could
do so. Thus before long they all were satisfied that Aaron Trow was in
the cavern before them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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